Disputing Claim of Progress After Calif. Case Settlement

The study on which your article
"Improvements Seen to California Schools as Result of Williams Case Settlement"(Aug. 13, 2007) reports, a study released by
the American Civil Liberties Union
Foundation of Southern California
and Public Advocates Inc., two of
the organizations that filed the
class-action suit Williams v.
California, calls into serious
question the optimistic view left by
your reporting.

More than 600,000 students
across the state, mostly in middle
and high schools, are being
taught by nearly 29,000 teachers
who are not certified in the
subjects they are assigned or lack
authorization to teach certain
students in their classes. In Los
Angeles County alone, 70 percent
of schools have misassigned
teachers. More than 20,000
classrooms statewide lack
teachers trained to teach
English-language learners.

Even if differential pay and
other incentives now under
consideration are somehow
successful in recruiting highly
qualified teachers for the neediest
schools and in retaining them for
their entire careers, these
teachers’ presence does not
assure that they will be teaching
in their areas of expertise. This
is a crucial distinction that is
not consistently reported by
investigators. As a result,
taxpayers are led to draw
invalid inferences about
educational quality.

In light of the overall evidence
to date, it’s hard to understand
how the results of the settlement
of the Williams case, brought on
behalf of the state’s most
neglected students, can be seen
as encouraging. Yes, there are
more textbooks now than before
the suit was filed, but that
hardly warrants jubilation.
It’s the least the state owes
these students.